Josh Leblanc's blog

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v496/maproomsystems/uspresidents/warof1812washdcburn.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.historycellar.com/2008/12/1815-washington-dc-needs-firemen-now.html&usg=__YVq9URwv1FezB34tA7R5DisSdSE=&h=277&w=400&sz=29&hl=en&start=8&tbnid=esObNAYpSbSvaM:&tbnh=86&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dthe%2Bburning%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bwhite%2Bhouse%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

American’s are surely the luckiest people on the planet. More than once we have been saved by a freak of nature or some weird accident. Take for example the war of 1812. The american army was a complete fail. We had almost all our regular troops fighting a pointless battle up in Canada, leaving our capitol to be defended by highly untrained militiamen. For example, in the battle of Bladensburg we retreated and surely would have been eradicated if it weren’t for the british suffering heatstroke, which prevented them from running. If they had been able to keep up with us, every single American would have been pickedoff before we even reached the capitol. Also once we fled the capitol and the British had captured and occupied it. A freak storm prevented them from burning the library of congress. And a random tornado inflicted more casualties than the american troops. Sometimes you have to realize how lucky you are…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/3904152560/

What are symbols? What do they mean? Why are they made? And why are they so important?

<—- See that? What does that mean? Sure it’s a smiley face, but what does that mean? What does that piece of abstract punctuation represent? What is it a symbol of?

Symbols are created to represent a feeling, cause or action. For example when Obama was elected president of the United States he became a representation of our country and what we stand for. He became the image in our heads that we associate with freedom rights liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He became a symbol.

Human beings are visual creatures. Our strongest of our five senses is eyesight. It’s a scientific fact. Therefor it is only natural that we associate words with images. Maybe if our strongest was smell our symbol wouldn’t be a vision but a smell. Maybe instead of an american flag we would use the smell of eagles and american soil to represent our country. If we had amazing hearing instead of great eyesight the Star Spangled Banner would have a lot more meaning. But since we see best it is a picture that we choose to represent us. Our brain can process images 80,000 times faster than a word. A picture is worth 80,000 words.

This post idea came from a post assignment from South Paris Collaborative in Long Island

 For more from me on this topic click here.

A big passion of mine is film and animation. I love to make videos. Especially animated ones. I find a unique thrill in creating a video that I know will make people smile. My favorite types of videos to make are animated ones. Especially stop motion, which is when you take a  picture of an ordinary object (usually something that wouldn’t normally move) move it a little, take another picture,  move it a little ect. It takes forever but the final product turns out to be something amazing. A few types of stop motion are Claymation (stop motion using clay) and Lego Stop Motion. I haven’t done very much Claymation because I can’t sculpt to save my life, but I do a ton of stop motion videos. You can see some of them at my youtube account. I also do animation on this site called Hatena.

In my life I hope to keep animating. I intend to keep animation as a hobby and I don’t expect it to develop into a major aspect of my career later in life. (I hope to become a teacher) Maybe I can use animated videos as a teaching tool but that is it.

One thing that really holds me down with my animation is my parents. They only let me have an hour and a half of computer/video game time every day so most of my videos end up not getting finished because I don’t have sufficient time to finish them. More than 50% of the animating process in in the editing for stop motion and 100% of it for all other types of animation. I usually take five minutes here and ten minutes there to do these videos and that makes the already tedious animating process take even longer.

First of all I’m waaaaay late on this post.

Soooo….

My quote is from Albert Einstien. The quote is : “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

I think it means that if you have all the answers then that is great but if you cannot dream then you will never amount to much.

This is my video project on Nikola Tesla. Leave a comment telling me what you think. WE ARE EXPEIRENCING SOME TECHNICHAL DIFFICULTIES, PLEASE CHECK ON THIS PAGE TOMORROW AND ALL PROBLEMS WILL BE FIXED

m/v/4bff1ba2b407437fad9e” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowFullScreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” width=”500″ height=”375″>

This was on the news today. Try to geuss what is wrong with this picture in the comments.

Lee Mayhew Ferry Sr. of Torrington
Lee Mayhew Ferry Sr.
August 14, 1923 – December 8, 2009
Lee Mayhew Ferry Sr. passed away on December 8, 2009 at the Connecticut Hospice in Branford CT. He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Ruth Parsons Ferry; his children Lee Jr. and wife Betty of Branford, CT; Diane and partner Scott of Kapaa, Kauai, HI; David and wife Sheryl of Murrysville, PA; grandchildren Barbara LeBlanc and husband Michael of Wallingford, CT; Christopher Ferry and wife Amanda of Somerville, MA. and Marissa and Abbie Ferry of Murrysville, PA. He is also survived by three great grandchildren – Joshua and Nathan LeBlanc and Mayhew Ferry. The last survivor of the six siblings in his family, he is predeceased by his parents – Ray L. Ferry and Bertha (Fritz) Ferry; sisters Dorothy Ferry Groppo and Ruth Ferry Hager and brothers Ward, Ray Jr. and Roy.
Born in Waterbury, he grew up on the family farm in Torrington. He was trained as a machinist.
He enlisted in the Army Air Forces in April 1943 and served from April 1943 to October 1945 as a Staff Sargeant and Crew Chief in WW II – European Theater, 9th Air Force 394th Squadron, 367th Fighter Group.
He was stationed in Great Britain, and then France, Belgium and Germany after the D Day invasion in June 1944. Lee was involved with moving forward fighter air support as the Allies advanced across Europe.
Following his honorable discharge in October 1945, he began a 35 year career as a machinist with Chase Brass and Copper Company and later held machinist positions for the Torrington Company and Inertia Dynamics in Canton before retiring in 1988. After his retirement, he and Ruth travelled frequently with their RV trailer in tow, visiting 49 states and 5 Canadian provinces over a period of 12 years.
Lee was active with the local Civil Defense for two decades – serving in many incidents including the Torrington flood of 1955 and the Waterbury tornado in the 1960’s He also served as a member and later Chairman of the Torrington Zoning Board and Board of Appeals for many years.
He was a member of 1st Congregational Church of West Torrington from 1943 – 1981, serving on the Board of Trustees and as a Deacon. He and Ruth joined Center Congregational Church 1981 where he also served on the Board of Trustees and as a Deacon. He was a member of Center Congregational Church Leisure Men’s Club and the Sullivan Senior Center and was a lifetime Member of Masons Seneca Lodge No 55.
Visitation will be held at the Phalen Funeral Home, 285 Migeon Ave., Torrington on Friday from 5-8 PM. A funeral will be held at the Center Congregational Church, 155 Main St., Torrington on Saturday morning at 10:00 AM followed by burial at Hillside Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Center Church Book of Remembrance, 155 Main St., Torrington, 06790.www.phalenfuneral.com

As most of you may know we are doing a project on our nineteenth century hero. Mine is Nikola Tesla. The assignment this week is to ask someone to give you their take on the video that we’re making about our hero. I have decided to ask Science Girl Em being that Tesla was a famous scientist and all.. Here’s the link to her blog, check it out! http://sciencegirlem.edublogs.org/ the video will be coming on this blog sometime next week.